LearnStorm Growth Mindset: Dave Paunesku on student effort
About this video
Dave Paunesku explains how teachers should talk about effort. Effort prepares the brain to grow and should be recognised, but it must not be used as a consolation prize. What matters is effort combined with good strategies, including stepping back to try a new approach or ask someone for help when you're spinning your wheels.
You'll be able to
- explain why effort shouldn't be used as a consolation prize.
- explain why effort works best with good strategies.
- describe what to do when I'm stuck and not making progress.
Key words
- neural plasticity
- The brain's ability to grow and change as you learn.
- consolation prize
- Something given to make you feel better when you didn't succeed.
- spinning your wheels
- Working hard but not making any progress.
Transcript
- The one thing I really like about the LearnStorm activities is that they introduce students to the growth mindset concept, to neural plasticity, to the fact that the brain grows and changes. And they introduce the importance of effort. It's really helpful for teachers to call out and recognize students when they're putting forth effort.
But it's also really important for them not to use effort as a kinda consolation prize. To say, it's okay that you didn't learn anything because you worked hard. The idea is to really remind students all the time that by putting forth effort, they're really preparing their brain to grow.
They're really kind of getting all their pistons in the brain firing, and that even if they don't master a particular concept yet, that the effort, the intellectual effort they put into it will eventually pay off with them kinda preparing their brain to understand the process that content over time.
And so it's really important to not just focus on effort but to focus on the combination of effort and using good strategies to really call attention to the fact that if you're working really hard at something, well, you know, maybe you should persist for a while but if it's really, if you're really spinning your wheels, it might be more helpful to step back and to think about is there a different strategy I can use?
Is there someone I can talk to to help me think differently about this particular kind of problem or this particular concept? To make sure that the effort I'm putting in is actually paying off with helping me grow that ability.
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